Category Archives: Big Tech

from the oh-come-on dept

Republicans have spent decades holding themselves out as the party of "small government" and "keeping government out of business," while also claiming to be strict supporters of an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. The reality, of course, is something altogether different. Even as Republican politicians often pay lips service to these claims, their policy ideas show the opposite. The top Republican on the House Energy & Commerce Committee has announced the GOP's "Big Tech Accountability Platform" that has an astounding level of government interference not just into business, but into the 1st Amendment rights of all Americans.

The full plan is somewhat astounding (I don't know why it's showing sideways, but I guess download it and rotate it). It opens by paying lip service to the idea of the 1st Amendment, and the value of "more speech" over suppressing speech. But then immediately seeks to undermine the 1st Amendment by suggesting that internet companies should be compelled to host speech they disagree with. It falsely suggests that the decision to suspend President Trump's account was an attack on his conservative views, and not his efforts to incite his supporters into overturning the election. It includes a section on giving law enforcement more access to content and forcing tech companies to become an arm of law enforcement. It (of course!) has a section on protecting "our children."

The whole thing is a censor's dream.

Of course, the GOP has no real power in Congress, especially in the House right now, but that could change quite a bit over the next few years, so we should take these proposals seriously. The key parts of the plan are here:

We could go through piece by piece and explain how these issues are misleading, wrong, silly, or pointless, but I'm sure we'll have plenty of chances to address each point as they start showing up in various bills.

What is clear, however, is that most of this policy is not about any principled stands the GOP may have. Most of it is about spite.

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Filed Under: 1st amendment, cathy mcmorris rodgers, censorship, content moderation, for the children, gop, responsibility, section 230, transparency

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House Republicans Have A Big Tech Plan... That Is Both Unconstitutional And Ridiculous - Techdirt

Beijing is adding new momentum to efforts in Brussels and Washington to curb the power of big tech companies.

China recently joined the chorus of governments advancing plans to impose new competition obligations on a small cadre of large technology companies, like Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

In November, China unveiled its first draft guidelines overseeing competitive behavior by digital giants. The proposals include blocking companies from crunching consumer data to set discriminatory prices, or selling products at prices below cost to gain market share. This month, it also heightened scrutiny of electronic-payment companies, warning that nonbank payment firms, if found to be dominating the market, could face antitrust investigations.

Chinas moves come as the European Union and the U.K. pursue similar efforts. The EU in December proposed a bill that would oblige major digital platforms to refrain from many potentially anticompetitive actions, such as promoting their own products over those of competitors. The U.K. plans legislation empowering a new digital-competition unit to enforce codes of conduct for companies that dominate strategic digital markets.

Driving the proposals are a growing number of policy makers, competition specialists and smaller tech rivals in Europe, Asia and the U.S. who say fresh laws are needed to ensure that new tech rivals can emerge to challenge the digital giants.

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China Joins Global Push to Rein in Tech Companies - The Wall Street Journal

Last week ended with stocks near all time highs and implied volatility near yearly lows.

Looking ahead, SPY options are pricing in just a 1.3% expected move into Friday's expiration, implying a bullish consensus around $388 and a bearish consensus near $377:

With some of the larger tech names set to report earnings this week (including Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA), Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL),Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB)), QQQ options are pricing in a 1.9% expected move into Friday's expiration, implying a bullish consensus around $332 and a bearish consensus near $319:

Expected Moves for Companies Reporting Earnings

This week is highlighted by large tech names Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Tesla. A more complete calendar with expected moves and prior earnings reactions to EPS beats/misses can be found on the Options AI Earnings Calendar.

Microsoft / Reporting Tuesday after hours / 3.7% Expected Move / link

Starbucks Corporation(NASDAQ: SBUX) / Reporting Tuesday after hours / 3.6% Expected Move / link

Apple / Reporting Wednesday after hours / 5.3% Expected Move / link

View more earnings on TSLA

Facebook / Reporting Wednesday after hours / 6.0% Expected Move / link

Tesla / Reporting Wednesday after hours / 7.2% Expected Move / link

Using the Expected Move to Help Inform Spread Trading

The expected move is the amount that options traders believe a stock price will move up or down. It can serve as a quick way to cut through the noise and see where real-money option traders are pricing potential stock moves. On Options AI, it is calculated using real-time option prices and displayed on a chart.

Knowing this consensus before making a trade can be incredibly powerful, regardless of whether you're using stock or options to make your trade. A helping hand with setting more informed price targets as well as a useful basis for starting strike selection.

Here's an example, using Starbucks and its expected move. On the Options AI platform, a trader can select the bullish consensus for spread trades to generate debit call spreads and credit put spreads around the move. Or, if a trader believes that the options market is overestimating the move, a trader can select a neutral view to sell to both the bulls and the bears and generate credit/income generating strategies such as an Iron Condor at the expected move shown here:

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A closer look at some spread trades to the bullish consensus, compared to stock and a single call:

And a closer look at the Iron Condor, with strikes set at the expected move:

Summary

Remember, the above are just examples of the many ways a trader might express a view using option spreads. They are intended solely to demonstrate how the expected move can provide actionable insight to consider before making any trade, particularly into an uncertain event. Whether gut-checking your own expectations versus the options crowd, generating trade ideas from option market signals, or for more informed strike selection. That's why Options AI puts the expected move at the heart of its chart-based platform.Learn / Options AIhas a couple of free tools as well as education on expected moves and spread trading. The concepts shown in Starbucks can apply to any stock and it is simply used here for illustrative purposes. Expected moves will change slightly into each company's earnings events so be sure to stay up to date via the earnings calendar. We'll be back later this week with previews of Tesla, Facebook and more.

The post What You Need to Know in Options Week of January 25th appeared first on Options AI: Learn.

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2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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What The Options Market Is Saying About The Big Tech Earnings Reports This Week - Yahoo Finance

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The sleeping giant that is Big Tech has awokenand thats been great news for a stock market that was starting to look a little tired.

It was only in our Jan. 18 column that we marveled at the S&P 500s ability to gain nearly 8% since Aug. 31 despite the FAANGs plus Microsoft (ticker: MSFT) sitting out the rally. That all changed this past week as the tech titans found themselves suddenly back in fashion.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose just 182.72 points, or 0.6%, to 30,996.98 this past week, and the S&P 500 gained 1.9%, to 3841.47. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jumped 4.2%, to 13,543.06, its biggest gain since the week ended Nov. 6.

Credit Netflix (NFLX), which soared 13% this past week after adding far more subscribers than Wall Street had been modeling, for helping the Nasdaq soar. But it wasnt the only FAANG on the move, with the rest of the group Facebook (FB), Amazon.com (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL)averaging a gain of more than 8%. They were helped by earnings optimism following Netflixs release and the fact that 10-year Treasury yields stopped going up. Rising yields point to a stronger economy and make fast-growing companies look less attractive on a valuation basis.

Of course, the Federal Reserve will have something to say about that following this coming weeks Federal Open Market Committee meeting. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues had to tamp down fears of an early end to their bond buying earlier this month, so dont expect him to rock the boat. If anything, he will continue to call on the federal government to help bail out the economy with another round of stimulusand he will promise to remain on hold for as long as the economy needs it.

[We] expect Chair Jerome Powell will use his post-meeting press conference to reinforce the message that the Fed would be tightening policy no time soon, writes Capital Economics economist Paul Ashworth. The Fed clearly views its short-lived tightening several years ago as a mistake and is much more likely to err on the side of caution this time aroundto avoid another taper tantrum in the bond markets.

But whats really needed now is progress in combating Covid-19. As the virus goes, so goes the market. In 2020, that meant watching the change in the number of Covid cases for evidence that the reopening was continuing apace. Now, the market is taking its cues from the pace of vaccinations, in particular the percentage of the population that is vaccinated weekly, explains UBS strategist Keith Parker.

The small-company Russell 2000 has been especially responsive to accelerations in the pace of dosingthe number of people getting vaccinated is now over 900,000 a dayand could get a boost if that number continues to increase. By Parkers math, a doubling in the rate could lift the index by an additional 6% to 9% by the middle of the second quarter, and the S&P 500 by 3% to 5%.

The current number of allocated U.S. doses points to potential for the pace to double, though bottlenecks still remain, he writes. Removing bottlenecks for administering doses would present an upside case near-term in our view.

That doesnt mean we shouldnt expect a correctionand perhaps soon. Lori Calvasina, chief U.S. equity strategist at RBC Capital Markets, notes the S&P 500 has been following a pattern typical of recessions since 1990, one that sees the recovery occur in three phases: an initial recovery, a period of consolidation, and a second rebound.

The initial recovery has lasted an average of 10 months, with an average return of 48%. That was followed by a period of consolidation that lasted from two to seven months and saw stocks sink an average of 17%. That was then followed by another rally that saw stocks gain an average of 19%.

The current bounce from the March lows has lasted about 10 months and produced gains of just over 71%. If the market follows the historical pattern, it should pull back by springbut that will be a buying opportunity. My assumption is that well see a continuation of the recovery rather than a double-dip recession, Calvasina says. If you think that, you have to buy the dip.

But it may also be time to add some protection to your portfolio. The markets demand for risky, high-beta, cyclically oriented stocks has meant that stocks with low volatility have gotten left behind. The return differential between the MSCI USA Minimum Volatility Index, which owns a portfolio of low-volatility stocks, and the MSCI USA Index is now at its widest level since 1999, says John Kolovos, chief technical strategist at Macro Risk Advisors. Owning some of these left-behind companies could be the way to add some ballast to a portfolio in case of a drop, Kolovos says.

Buy some utilities, buy some staples, he explains. Those are the most oversold in an environment of market froth and excess.

Just be sure to sell them again once the correction is over.

Read more The Trader:GM and Ford Stock Finally Capture Some of Teslas Heat. Why This Is Only the Beginning.

Write to Ben Levisohn at Ben.Levisohn@barrons.com

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Big Tech Stocks Are Back. Whats Behind the Nasdaqs 4% Rally. - Barron's

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Tech titans stocks rallied during Wednesdays regular session, notching large single-day moves, as investors appeared optimistic with their prospects under the new administration of President Joe Biden.

As Biden took the oath of office in Washington, Alphabet (ticker: GOOGL) fared among the best in big tech, rising 5.4% to $1880.07, which marks a record. Other large tech companies shares fared well too. Amazon.com (AMZN) rose 4.6% to $3263.38, Apple (AAPL) advanced 3.3% to $132.03, and Facebook (FB) climbed 2.4% to $267.48. Microsoft stock (MSFT) rose 3.7% to $224.34 on Wednesday.

Overall theres a view that Biden coming in is going to be bullish for stocks, and especially the tech sector, Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives told Barrons. Biden will begin ratcheting down China tensions, and there is a massive push around stimulus and spending. Thats going to accelerate an economic rebound in the second half of the year.

Wednesdays rally comes amid bipartisan criticism of the largest U.S. tech companies, and several antitrust legal actions initiated by state authorities and federal agencies charged with regulating their behavior. Investors have largely brushed off foreign and domestic regulatory concerns thus far.

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Ives says the battle between Washington and the tech companies has no end in sight, but at this point, investors dont see a resolution likely for a year or more,thus granting the companies the ability to continue on pace. Its a long term risk for the tech stalwarts, Ives says. But right now, theres still a green light to own tech because a risk of breakups is a longer-term tail risk.

Wedbush remains bullish on tech stocks, and even though there remains risk in many of the large-cap tech stocks, Ives says there is still another 25% of upside ahead. Ives favorite name is Apple because people upgrading their smartphones to 5G models will help sales, and there is little risk of the government breaking up the company.

Ives also expects a strong earnings season. Netflix (NFLX) reported earnings after the close Tuesday, topping 200 million subscribers. The streaming giant said its cash-flow situation had stabilized after years of debt financing to grow its library of video content.

I expect a blowout tech earnings season in the next few weeks, Ives said, adding that cybersecurity companies should report strong results, along with big names such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet, among others.

Write to Max A. Cherney at max.cherney@barrons.com

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Why Alphabet and Other Big Tech Stocks Rallied Today. - Barron's

In the frenzied days after Democrats won control of Congress and the presidency, and rioters invaded the Capitol,Big Tech, relying on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, for immunity from civil suit, launched a surprise attack on web content they deemed objectionable.Twitterpermanently banned President TrumpDonald TrumpBlinken holds first calls as Biden's secretary of State Senators discussing Trump censure resolution Dobbs: Republicans lost in 2020 because they 'forgot who was the true leader' MOREs account, wiping out his contact with 88 million followers, andbannedthousands of conservative social media accounts.Google and Appleblocked Parlers App from their stores, andAmazon Web Services(AWS) denied Parler access to its cloud network. Parler was shut down. A swath of conservatives lost the ability to speak on the internet, the nations new public square, the place where political ideas are exchanged and commerce flows.

Two questions must be answered:

Congress spectacularly muddled section 230, and the U.S. Supreme Court has not addressed it. Fortunately, decades-old Supreme Court cases involving the tech giants of yesteryear (i.e. coal companies, railroads and company towns) provide guidance on the limits of Big Techs power to regulate the public square.

What does section 230 do?

Section 230 has two primary provisions. The first exempts internet providers from civil liability for publishing any information from another content provider that is objectionable. The second provision exempts Big Tech from liability when it takes voluntary, good faith actions to restrict objectionable materials or provides the technical means to restrict them.

Private parties cannot deprive unpopular citizens of constitutional rights when governing the public square:

By granting Big Tech immunity from civil liability when restricting material from the internet it deemed objectionable, Congress encouraged and indirectly authorized private parties to regulate speech. Congress has no constitutional power to authorize private parties to deprive even unpopular citizens of their constitutional rights. Moreover, when private parties control the new public square they function as a government and must provide constitutional rights for all.

These principles are set out inMarsh v. Alabama (1946). Marsh, a privately-owned town, made it illegal for persons to distribute religious literature on its sidewalks. Since the town functioned like any other community having speech and commerce, citizens in the town had the same rights as if in a municipal town. When private parties wield great power over the publics use of town services, the powers of the private parties are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those using the town. Private property rights are not sufficient to justify restricting fundamental liberties.

Since the First Amendment severely limits governments power to regulate political speech, the government cannot grant private parties, functioning as a government, more power than it has. If Congress desires to impose speech limitations on the internet, it must do so directly, by government regulation that protects the constitutional rights of citizens.

Congress cannot grant private parties the right to regulate competitors:

By refusing to sell Parlers app, and by denying Parlers access to cloud storage, Google, Apple and AWS, private parties, relying on a congressional grant of civil immunity, took, in essence, regulatory actions to put another private company out of business. Congress has no constitutional authority to authorize or foster conduct by private parties that allows them to regulate other businesses. This has been the law since the U.S. Supreme Courts decidedCarter v. Carter Coal (1936).

InCarter,Congress delegated to coal producers and miners the power to impose standards on other producers and miners. Carterheld that a private entity may not be entrusted with the power to regulate the business of another, and especially a competitor. Any statute which attempts to confer such power undertakes an intolerable and unconstitutional interference with personal liberty and private property. The delegation is so clearly arbitrary, and a denial ofdue process

By granting immunity from liability to Big Tech for restricting materials Big Tech deems objectionable, Congress is sanctioning the regulation of private parties by other private parties, an action it has no constitutional authority to authorize. Regulating competition is the responsibility of the government.

The principles inCarterwere upheld by the D.C. Circuit as recently as 2013 inAmerican Assn of Railroads v.US DOT(reversed on other grounds).

Section 230 immunity from suit encourages Big Tech to assume the regulatory functions of government by regulating the rights of other businesses to speak and compete in the public square. The Constitution does not give Congress or private parties this power.

William L.Kovacs is authorof Reform the Kakistocracy: Rule by the Least Able or Least Principled Citizensand a former senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The author has no financial or lobbying interest in this issue.

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Section 230's unconstitutional delegation of power to Big Tech | TheHill - The Hill

As President Joe Bidens term begins, hes widely expected to continue a crackdown on Americas tech giants and experts say his pick for attorney general, Judge Merrick Garland, will be a fair yet tough opponent if hes confirmed.

Garland, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, while not regarded as an antitrust expert, would bring significant antitrust experience to the job that his predecessor didnt have. Hes written about antitrust law, briefly taught the subject at Harvard Law School, and as a judge, he had an opportunity to weigh in on a number of antitrust cases.

I think Merrick Garland is a very unique take for this job, from an antitrust perspective, Carl Hittinger, antitrust lawyer and partner with BakerHostetler, told Yahoo Finance, speaking generally about Garlands likely antitrust approach but not about particular defendants.

Garland, whose nomination for the Supreme Court was famously thwarted in 2016, has a reputation for being moderate. His perspective as a judge will likely spur him to tailor any antitrust claims to those that he thinks the Justice Department can win, Hittinger predicted. And because the U.S. appeals court judge and former federal prosecutor spent most of his career working for the government, Hittinger said he will be largely free of conflicts that would prevent him from involvement in the cases.

He's not going to bring cases as attorney general, in whatever area, unless the case has a basis of law, and in fact, Hittinger said. I think he will question with all the divisions whether the prosecution they're bringing is the right one...and his antitrust background is going to come to bear in those decisions.

Garlands wealth of experience working for the government could also influence his approach to Big Tech, Global Antitrust Institute and George Mason University law professor Abbott Lipsky, Jr. said.

He is probably an individual very sympathetic to the law enforcement view of the world, and particularly to the federal law enforcement institutions, Lipsky said of Garland. So he will be tough not tough in the sense of wanting to beat up on anybody, but in the sense of wanting to apply the law fairly and wanting to do it in a practical and thoroughly considered way.

Story continues

Harry First, New York University School of Law professor, said even more so than Garland, the departments yet-to-be-appointed deputy attorney general for the antitrust division will heavily influence cases against Big Tech. The usual run of antitrust enforcement is controlled by the assistant AG in charge of the antitrust division, First said.

One exception to that rule was a high-profile antitrust lawsuit the Justice Department and 11 states filed against Google (GOOG, GOOGL) in October, accusing it of engaging in anticompetitive behavior in its search and search advertising businesses. Then-Attorney General William Barr reportedly pushed hard to speed up the case against the search giant while the assistant attorney general in charge of antitrust matters was not involved at all due to a conflict of interest.

Then-Assistant AG Makan Delrahim recused himself based on his involvement as a lobbyist in Googles controversial effort to acquire advertising platform DoubleClick, an acquisition woven inseparably into the governments antitrust claims.

Lipsky said while an AGs close involvement in a departments cases is rare, the relationship with each deputy varies from administration to administration.

As for the assistant attorneys general, there are different patterns, Lipsky said. Barr seems to have taken a tremendous amount of responsibility in the investigation of the technology firms, and in bringing the complaint against Google.

A review of Garlands involvement in antitrust cases, the experts said, showed no viewpoint favoring antitrust plaintiffs or defendants. In antitrust cases where Garland participated as a judge for the D.C. Circuit, he joined the majority, but did not author any of the opinions. Reuters Practical Law Antitrust publication noted in a 2016 analysis that Garlands participation in the majority showed a slight pro-enforcement tendency.

One pro-enforcement decision involved a proposed merger of Heinz and the baby foods maker Beech-Nut. After the FTC challenged the merger of Heinz and Beech-Nut back in 2000, Garland signed onto an opinion ruling in favor of the commission and ordering a court to pause the deal while the FTC challenged it in court. Heinz abandoned the $185 million merger after the appeals courts ruling, which found the FTC had raised serious and substantial questions about the deal.

Still, Hittinger said, There are mergers that hes blocked when he was on the court, mergers hes upheld. I don't see any deference, one way or the other.

If hes confirmed by the Senate, Garland will be entering the Justice Department amid a broader movement to rein in Big Tech. In addition to the lawsuit in October, Google was hit with two additional antitrust lawsuits in December one from 10 states focused on ad tech and another from 38 attorneys general focused on exclusionary contracts.

Facebook (FB) is also facing two antitrust lawsuits: one brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) seeking to break it up, and another brought by 48 U.S. attorneys general claiming it violates antitrust law by buying up competitors. The competitive practices of Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) remain part of ongoing investigations by federal and state officials.

Will the case against Google continue under a Biden administration? While there are instances where the Justice Department under a new administration has dropped or settled charges pending against a defendant, those instances are rare.

Its not unheard of and its not impossible, First said, pointing out that the Reagan administrations Justice Department dropped and settled major antitrust cases it inherited from prior administrations.

One dropped case was filed on the last day of the Johnson administration, more than a decade before Reagan took office, and sought to break up IBM. Another, inherited from the Carter administration, sought to curtail suspected price fixing between oil companies. Reagans DOJ also settled one of the departments largest and most notable cases, brought against AT&T under Ford.

With the Google case, First said, he would expect the new administration may want to change the direction of the case or broaden it, though not drop claims entirely.

One major concern is the timeframe set for proceedings against Google, which is not expected to go to trial until September 2023.

He and other experts acknowledged the complexity involved in the case but compared it to one of the departments most famous antitrust suits the case against Microsoft, alleging it engaged in a series of anticompetitive activities such as using exclusionary agreements to protect its Windows operating system, which ended up hurting competition in the software industry.

In the Microsoft case, the complaint was filed in May and they went to trial in September, First said. I was actually a little shocked at what looks to be a very deliberate pace of the [Google] litigation. That strikes me to be not a very good idea.

Lipsky agreed that the Google case schedule poses a risk, especially when dealing with technology and disputes that could become obsolete during the course of the litigation.

In addition, Lipsky said the DOJ and the FTC have long been mindful of the string of aggressive antitrust actions brought between the late 1960s and 1970s against IBM, oil companies, and cereal manufacturers, that failed, in part due the governments decisions to expand charges that lengthened the time for resolution.

All of those cases fell flat on their faces, Lipsky said.

Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance and former litigation attorney.

Follow Alexis Keenan on Twitter @alexiskweed.

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Big Tech faces a 'tough' opponent in Merrick Garland as attorney general - Yahoo Tech

Delivering his first remarks on the steps of the Capitol overrun by an angry mob two weeks ago, President Joe Biden called for an end to Americas uncivil war.

Politics doesn't have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn't have to be a cause for total war, he said. And we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.

Even as he spoke, a conspiracy theory was spreading on social media, that federal troops were not in Washington to safeguard the proceedings but to intimidate conservatives.

News outlet Axios reported that the theory began with Fox News Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, building on right-wing anger over the perception that the major platforms, Facebook, Twitter and Googles YouTube censor opposition voices.

"Look for this to be a unifying argument of the right as the Biden era begins," wrote Mike Allen, co-founder of Axios, wrote in his morning newsletter.

Twitter purge angers conservatives: Trump allies and Republican lawmakers lost thousands of followers in Twitter purge after Capitol riots

'Burn down DC': Violence that erupted at Capitol was incited by pro-Trump mob on social media

New administration. Same problems.

Under intensifying siege from the political right and left since the attack on the Capitol, the nations leading tech companies can expect the scrutiny that began under Donald Trump to continue under Joe Biden and a Congress narrowly controlled by Democrats.

Bipartisan support to restrain the vast power held bya handful of large corporations grew during the Trump administration and shows no signs of ebbing as Democrats retake the White House.

While the Biden administration is expected to take on privacy and antitrust,the Democracy-shuddering wave of misinformation and disinformation during and after theelection is also expected to get close inspection.

Since losing Novembers election, Trump used the platforms to delegitimize the election results. On Jan. 6, a mob stormed the Capitol after Trump urged supporters to help stopthe certification of Electoral College votes.

Whats top of the agenda for tech companies right now is to sit down and rebuild their policies from the ground up, said Daniel Kreiss, professor of political communication at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina.

The position that theyve been in has simply been untenable. You saw that over the last year, dozens of reversals of policy, inconsistent enforcement action, unclear and shifting rationales for how platforms are going to approach content moderation," Kreiss said. "It seems to me that they really need to lay out their principles about how they are going to act in political societies, have a very clear and consistent framework and apply those policies fairly and equally to all of their users.

US President-elect Joe Biden arrives for his inauguration as the 46th US President.(Photo: OLIVIER DOULIERY, AFP via Getty Images)

Social media platforms have been judged harshly by both parties for how they policed content over the past year, from the COVID-19 pandemic to election-related misinformation and disinformation.

Democrats, including Biden who was sworn in as the 46th president Wednesday, say the social media platforms dont restrict or remove enough harmful content, particularly hate speech, extremism, hoaxes and falsehoods. They have called on companies to play a bigger and more responsible role in curating public debate.

Those on the right say these platformshave too much latitude to restrict and remove content and target conservatives based on their political beliefs. Those grievances boiled over when Facebook, Twitter and YouTube suspended Trumps accounts, citing the risk that he would use his social media megaphone to incite more violence before the end of his term.

In a farewell video from the White House on Tuesday, Trump spoke out against shutting down free and open debate. Only if we forget who we are, and how we got here, could we ever allow political censorship and blacklisting to take place in America, he said.

Throughout his administration, Trump crusaded against Big Tech which fact-checked, restricted and, in some cases, blocked his messages.

The target of that crusade: Narrowing or rescinding Section 230, which shields social media companies from legal liability for what their users post and gives platforms immunity when moderating objectionable content.

The key part of the provision sometimes called the "26 words that created the internet" reads, No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Those protections have been crucial to the growth of tech companies but have now become a proxy for anger on both sides of the aisle.

Those positions have only hardened since Jan. 6 and a subsequent purge of QAnon-linked accounts, making it even more challenging to reach consensus on Section 230 reform, said Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity law professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and the author The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet, a book about Section 230.

A number of bills that would hold Facebook, Twitter and Google legally accountable for how they moderate content are circulating in Congress, including the EARN IT Act and the PACT Act.Biden has called for Section 230 to be revoked.

You have half of D.C. that thinks there should be much less moderation and the other half thinking there should be more moderation. Its hard to find the solution when you don't have people agreeing on the problem, Kosseff said. Overall, I think its going to continue to be a big issue of debate.

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Biden and Section 230: New administration, same problems for Facebook, Google and Twitter as under Trump - USA TODAY

The call for abandoning ideological prejudice in the West, that sounds like, "But out of our affairs, we can do whatever we want to Uyghurs when there are a million in concentration and reeducation camps in our country." And we'll shut down journalists for even mentioning that if they try to operate inside China for that. The idea that the strong should not bully the weak sounds like, "Don't blame the United States. US, you better behave yourself." But what about the way the Chinese are treating Australia right now, or a host of other smaller countries that cross China's political, economic or national security interests? I mean, the willingness of Beijing to really make you pay when you engage in behaviors they don't like, is growing very quickly along with their international capacity to muscle flex.

And then on the pandemic, I mean, China is calling for greater global cooperation, but that also means that they need to cooperate in terms of transparency in what happened with coronavirus. And let's remember that there were, from my perspective, two big obscenities in terms of the world, in terms of coronavirus itself and the pandemic. One is the United States leaving the WHO in the middle of the pandemic, just an extraordinary antithesis of what a country should be doing, a country like the United States. But even more foundational was China lying to the World Health Organization about the lack of human-to-human spread for a month when we could have stopped this thing so much earlier, could have contained it, especially given the capacity we now see that China has to engage in contact tracing, quarantine and lockdown. And they chose not to. And that's a serious problem. For all of those reasons, this speech was not an enormously well-received speech by those watching.

Why did the Italian Prime Minister resign?

Well, I mean, largely it is over disagreement on how money should be spent in terms of massive coronavirus stimulus, sort of like the disagreement, the big disagreement, between Democrats and Republicans on the $1.9 trillion right now. I mean, how green, how sustainable should it be? How much money goes to healthcare? How much money goes to new technologies? How much to the workers? Former Prime Minister Renzi basically pulled out of the governing coalition over disagreements on that. And they weren't able to get a solid majority in a vote of confidence. That makes it much more difficult to governance done. And that's why Conte resigned. He is the 29th Prime Minister since World War II. If he doesn't get elected back in, if they can't put a new coalition together, they will have the 30th in Italy. Italy's kind of like the Doritos of G20 governments. Crunch all you want, they'll make more. That's kind of what we're looking at in Italy. The good news is it's not all that exciting.

Where is the international outrage for what's happening in Ethiopia's Tigray region?

And no question, there's a lot of violence. There are obvious human rights breaches across the board. There's danger of famine. There are tens of thousands of refugees. And this at the hands of a Prime Minister of Ethiopia that had won the Nobel Peace Prize, and some saying he should return the prize, just as they were saying that about Aung San Suu Kyi for some of her nationalist calls to help support minority repression in Myanmar after doing so much to stand up to the authoritarian government. A couple of points here. One is that Ethiopia, talking about this level of conflict at a time when everyone's focusing on coronavirus, everything small and local gets lost in the scrum. But also, Prime Minister Abiy in Ethiopia has led the charge in trying to move away from an ethnic-led federal government, where sort of different groups control political power, to one where it's much more of a traditional political party system, or I should say a modern political party system. And the Tigray in Ethiopia were the group that stood to lose the most party, a minority group that wielded effectively a majority of patronage and power. And so, the willingness to blame Abiy for the violence that we're seeing right now, even though he has the Ethiopian army, there's Eritrean military that's involved. It's an ally of his. I mean, clearly he has more power. But some of the initial violence clearly came at the hands of local Tigray as well who refused to recognize the Ethiopian election process and the suspension because of the pandemic, and instead held their own election, became a breakaway province. And so in these situations, there is so much conflicted narrative in terms of history, and it's very hard to lay responsibility and blame firmly at the hands of one side in this conflict. Those two things together get you why we're not paying as much attention as we perhaps should to a country with over 100 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, and one of the strongest growth trajectories economically in the entire world.

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How can the Biden administration rein in Big Tech? - GZERO Media

WASHINGTONThe storming of the Capitol by President Trumps supporters is expected to turbocharge Congressional efforts to regulate big techand many lawmakers are expected to focus on scaling back the liability shield that protects internet companies.

The Capitol incursion, some of which was planned and discussed in advance on social media, has hardened many Democrats view that a lack of tech-platform regulation is undermining democracy. Georgias election of two Democratic Senators last week shifted a divided Congress to Democrats control, improving the chances of passing legislation targeting consumer-data privacy, tech companies market power and the liability shield known as Section 230.

The bottom line is that the odds of legislative action on privacy, antitrust and 230 just went up significantly, said Blair Levin, a policy analyst with equity research firm New Street Research. The party that wants to legislate now has the power to put a bill on the Senate floor, and on all those issues there are Republicans likely to join with Democrats.

Republicans have their own issues with big internet companies, asserting that they are abusing their power to silence conservative voices on their platforms. Many Republicans support rewriting Section 230, and some claim that tech companies are shifting further left to appease Democrats expanding their power in Washington.

After the Capitol riot, Twitter Inc. permanently banned Mr. Trump and Facebook Inc. indefinitely suspended him, citing his role in fanning violence, while Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.s Google cut off support for the Parler social-media app on grounds that it doesnt adequately police content that could incite violence.

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Capitol Riot Puts More Scrutiny on Big Tech - The Wall Street Journal